Five Easy Ways to Start
Creating Your New Private Practice
Part I: Combine Your Talents and Interests to
Develop Your Niche
by John T. Carlsen, Psy.D.
If you dream about starting a private practice, you might
be stuck somewhere between the dreaming and the starting. You are not alone.
When trying to create something new, most of us have no
idea where to start. This is especially true with something so vague and
undefined as a new small business. So, you might have tried to settle —
for simply continuing to dream and trying to make the best of it. Trying to
move forward without a clear sense of direction leaves you too overwhelmed
to do anything.
Yet, if you are like most new psychologists, you cannot
simply put this issue to rest. Despite your best efforts, you have never
been able to shelve the dream completely or convince yourself to stop
thinking about it. No matter how much effort you put into making do with
your day job, the gnawing feeling that you are wasting your potential never
completely goes away.
Would you include yourself in this group?
You constantly battle with waves of restlessness and
struggle to compensate for feeling creatively unfulfilled. You know that you
belong doing something more important, or at least more interesting,
something that uses more of your professional talents and gifts and
stretches your creative mind. Ultimately, you want to do something more
fulfilling that would generate enough income to help pay off your loans and
maybe even raise your standard of living.
But, you have no idea what to do next.
Your struggle is what leads most people to become
professionals: They feel compelled by a strong inner drive to make something
worthwhile out of their lives. They believe they have no other choice than
to continue struggling with this inner agitation until they can reach some
sort of resolution. Face it: If you were the type who could simply go
somewhere every day and work for someone else to earn your living, you would
have done so by now. And, that would have been the end of it.
You certainly would not have invested so much time and
energy (not to mention money) to become a professional psychologist.
You could, I’m sure, have come up with far easier (and
more enjoyable) ways to spend this kind of time and money. Clearly, you must
have higher aspirations and greater expectations about what you want to
accomplish in your life. They probably include working at something you love
and, maybe, getting paid well for doing it. Or, possibly doing something you
believe will make the world a better place. Or maybe you simply want to try
being your own boss and creating a small organization that reflects your
priorities.
Whatever your reasons, you owe it to yourself (and the
world around you) to find your professional niche. There are people all
around you who need your help, who need the benefits of the gifts you have
to offer. And, they continue to wait while you struggle to resolve this
question.
Actually, if you are like most people, your dream is
probably hovering in the psychic space right in front of you, just a bit
beyond your reach. You probably glimpse it every day. At least, you feel its
constant, almost gravitational, pull for your attention. And, not a week
goes by that you experience relief from its relentless assault on your
conscience, provoking you to take it seriously and find the energy to start
doing something about it. In fact, the more you try to suppress it, the more
strongly it takes over your imagination.
It’s time you started stretching your arms to grab hold
of it. And, there is no better time to start than now. But what can you do
next? What steps can you take today to begin moving yourself from dreaming
to starting — without subjecting yourself to any unnecessary risks? The
secret involves starting simply and building a foundation that is close to
home. The following guidelines will help you get started:
- Describe your private practice/small business dreams
on paper as accurately as you can.
Let your
imagination go wild and capture every picture it gives you, no matter
how unrealistic or unimaginable. In 1987, when I first wrote down the
idea that I wanted to work with people privately using my writing and
editing skills, I had no idea I would wind up helping people to create
more powerful resumes and earning more per hour than the average high
school or college English teacher. Who could have imagined that people
would pay me well to indulge my obsession with grammar and punctuation?
Avoid the temptation to use your computer to write these first thoughts.
Typing will keep you trapped in your mind, where you will stay focused
on analyzing whether or not your ideas are possible. Your writing hand,
by contrast, is connected directly to your heart, so it will ensure that
you also capture the emotional energy that fuels your dreams. Writing by
hand will slow you down to the speed of your dreams and encourage you to
capture them fully without racing beyond them.
Think about what kinds of problems you want to help
people solve that also hold some personal meaning or significance for
you. You probably have identified some
specific areas of psychology that you find particularly fascinating and
started developing them into an area of specialty. Think about who might
appreciate what you know in these areas and how you could use your
fascination to help them solve problems and improve their daily lives.
I, for example, have a libeling interest in trying to prevent people
from carrying their unused talents to their graves. I grieve a bit
whenever I come across people who continue wasting their talents and
gifts simply because they are afraid to reveal them or have no idea how
to start using them. As our country and culture become ever more driven
by technology and materialism - and people become increasingly isolated
from a sense of community - I feel even more committed to helping people
reconnect with themselves in these simple ways. Maybe you, similarly,
have deep concern about helping families to communicate more effectively
or helping schools to set up more effective programs for special-needs
children. Give yourself the chance to express it in words and start
applying your passions for helping the people who need you.
Start combining your psychology interests with your
other interests in new ways. If you want to
create a practice or small business outside the traditional realm of
providing outpatient therapy or testing, ask how you could apply
psychological principles and strategies to help people in your other
areas of interest. I often tell people how my two identities as a writer
and a psychologist interact to improve each other. On one hand, my
skills as a writer help me to improve the contents and the timing of my
therapeutic interventions. On the other, my therapeutic perspective
helps me to understand the causes of writer’s block and the most
effective strategies for helping my individual clients to work through
it. Think about your own unusual interests and how you could combine
them in new and unprecedented ways. For a wonderful example of how a
successful business is preparing to combine traditionally consumer
services, read about how Starbucks is moving into the music business.1
(By the way, this magazine "Fast Company" is a wonderful
educational tool about marketing for new private practitioners and
business owners.)
Zero in on the challenges that people have a vested
interest in overcoming as soon as possible but cannot address adequately
on their own. Author and educator Parker
Palmer calls this "finding the place where your gifts intersect
with the world’s greatest needs."2 When I started my career
coaching practice over 17 years ago, I had no idea I would uncover a
knack for helping people to uncover and start living their hidden
professional dreams. Or carve out a niche of helping graduate students
to articulate their aspirations so they could write better internship
applications and conduct more successful interviews. While applying for
my own internship in 1992, I kept thinking someone ought to help
students to navigate this challenging and unpredictable process. As I
continued mulling over this question during the next year, it gradually
dawned on me: The person I was looking for was me. Looking in the
mirror, I realized that I was the Someone who could assume this
responsibility for guiding others. As a career and writing consultant, I
had the necessary skills and expertise - and passion - to help students
match their interests and skills with training that would help them
succeed. So, the following fall, I designed and led my first workshop
series for internship applicants, fueled by nothing more than a burning
desire to help others manage an overwhelming process and the knowledge
of what had worked for me.
Notice how often in your daily life you come across
people who have trouble with the kinds of problems you want to help them
solve. You will be amazed by how quickly these
people start appearing all around you, once you start paying attention.
You will come across stories about them in magazines or your daily
newspaper, on television, on the bus or train, even at dinner and
cocktail parties. Start a journal in which you keep track of these
situations and take time to analyze exactly what role(s) you could play
in helping the stories to turn out differently. Think about how you
could help the characters to make different choices or overcome certain
obstacles to achieve their goals and to start living their dreams.
If you give yourself permission to do all of this on paper
first, you can quit wondering when you will take the first step and stop
beating yourself up for not having made progress sooner. You can also shift
your attention toward the excitement of bringing something into existence
that was not here before now. In a very short time, you will start
recognizing and appreciating the unique perspectives you have to offer your
clients. And, you will see clearly how you could use your natural talents
and gifts in creative and innovative ways to help an overlooked segment of
the population to solve their problems and start achieving their goals.
More importantly, by starting on paper, you will avoid
taking on the responsibility of a long-term office lease . . . and the
embarrassment of having to close your practice prematurely - because you
failed to build an adequate stream of new clients. Rather than sitting alone
in your brand-new office as many new private practitioners do - wondering
why people are not beating a path to your door - you will learn to position
yourself to reach this group more effectively. You will prepare yourself to
start attracting the flow of people who want and need the unique expertise
you offer . . . and are willing to pay whatever it costs to get it.
And, you will create a written map of your plans that both
guides your efforts and sustains your confidence as you navigate these
uncharted waters to bring your professional dreams into reality.
1. Overholt, Alison. (2004, July). Thinking
Outside the Cup: Listening to Starbucks. Fast Company.
50-56.
2. Palmer, Parker. (2000). Let
Your Life Speak. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
